Asian Movie Review: Cold War (寒戰, 2012)

Just caught a friday night showing of the long awaited police film "Cold War".    It's got an all star cast of some of the biggest names in HK cinema - Tony Leung Ka-fei and Aaron Kwok, with special guest star Andy Lau.  Supporting cast includes Chin Ka-Lok, Charlie Yeung, Gordon Lam and Aarif Lee.... AND on top of all that there's an ensemble cast of familiar faces that includes QUITE a few AnD artists -- Grace Huang, Andy On, Tony Ho, Michael Wong, JBS (steals the movie!), JJ and Terence Yin.

The film is hypothetically about a plot to kidnap a van of HK police officers, one of whom happens to be the acting commissioner's son.  A power battle ensues within the police force to see who takes charge of the investigation.  Ultimately the movie becomes about the investigation by the ICAC into what happened and try to find the mole in the force that allowed this to happen.

This film really tries to be something ambitious along the lines of "Infernal Affairs",  but that takes more than an all star cast, slick cinematography and a good size budget to make a classic.   "Cold War" is one of those films you feel like you've got to continuously fight to keep up with,  trying to figure out whats going on and who's motives are what and how they may or may not have double crossed someone.   So you can watch it and think you know kind of what happened... but if you think about it afterwards you're still pretty sure that it doesn't make sense...

(spolier warning - so did Chin Ka-Lok really sell them out to make money?  if so how come he still got shot?  Was Andy in on it the whole time??? Would you really set a bomb off in a crowded movie theater killing dozens of people, just to make sure your dad kept his job? Why not just kill his rival instead??)

Besides knowing a lot of people in the movie,  it was also filmed in part at Cyberport,  where our office used to be.  I remember seeing them filming there earlier this year before we moved out (the press conference scene with Andy Lau in case you're wondering).

Computer expert Terence Yin on the job. Anyway,  I'll give it a solid 6/10,  just don't think about the plot details too much afterwards and you'll enjoy it.